I was diagnosed with HIV in January 2011, with a normal CD4 count but high viral load (>500,000). As I still had a high viral load six months later (330,000), I decided to go on treatment with Atripla on 1 August. The post-tablet buzz and early morning grogginess disappeared after a few days, but it was the rash that appeared on day 8 that was the killer. This short blog will document how I either medicate through it and suffer this rash to its conclusion, or switch to another medication.

Tuesday, 16 August 2011

day 14

I woke in an itchy agony as usual this morning - hands and feet again - but knew there was very little left of my body for the rash to affect. It only had to fill in a few areas on my hips and the reverse of my forearms and calves, while the rest continued to slowly fade away. My ears were still hot and red, but not itchy, and less hot than before.

What caught me by surprise was when I opened my mouth: no more coating on my tongue! I've had a white coating on my tongue since I was a child, and although this has occasionally concerned various GPs over the years, it has proved harmless. It turned yellow and got thicker a few months after I was infected with HIV, which was more of a concern to me, because I also experienced occasional inflammations in a taste bud or the opening of a salivary gland as well. So it was quite strange to see a pink, uncoated tongue, for the first time ever [Note: This didn't last, and went back to being yellow after a few weeks. It stayed that way for around a year, although the coating decreased. I'd taken various treatments for it from May 2011, such as Fungulin lozenges, but they only lessened the coating while I took them, and it returned to "normal" a few days after the end of the course. By around May 2012, when I got a new job, it has remained it's usual pre-infection pale white and has remained that way.].

I also noticed that the dull toothache I'd had for the past few weeks had disappeared to nothing over the past few days as well. This gave me even more confidence that my immune system was finally starting to look at other areas of my body than only the cells that were infected with the virus.

My hands would occasionally itch, but nothing that required plunging them into cold water. The reverse of my forearms were the last areas that looked vaguely active as far as the rash was concerned. Throughout the course of the rash, the only part of my body that the rash had not covered was my genitals.

There was a certain amount of swelling and itchiness in hands, feet, and shins once I was in bed, but the intensity wasn't the same as the other nights. I almost thought of putting my blanket over my quilt, which is what I normally do to keep warm in winter. I also noticed that after dunking my feet and calves in cold bathwater before I went to bed, they stayed cold for a good 20 minutes afterward. And most importantly, I didn't feel impelled to re-anesthetize them in cold water an hour after I went to bed - again, a first after many nights of this. Once in bed, I stayed in bed, and got to sleep around 1.30 am.